Stealing Benefacio's Roses

Book excerpt: Following the acclaimed Secrets of "The Talking Jaguar" and "Long Life, Honey in the Heart," this is an expansive, lyrical novel in the tradition of indigenous oral storytelling. Based on the author's many years of living in a Guatemalan village, "Stealing Benefacio's Roses" interweaves dramatic recountings of village life and the political horrors of civil war with lyric retellings of sacred Mayan myths. The story shifts expertly from timeless, with archetypal characters like Raggedy Boy and the goddess known as the Water-Skirted Beauty, to timely in the book's striking first-person narrative set in the 1980s. Prechtel shows how ancient myths can become a part of life for everyone and help nurture spiritual survival in the modern world. Though it comes third in sequence with the author's other two books, "Stealing Benefacio's Roses" also stands on its own as a classic work of spiritual seeking and adventure.